Srebrenica Massacre: Anniversary of 1995 Genocide Carried Out by Serb Forces During Bosnian War

From 11 to 13 July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army shot more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica.

The Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity in Europe since the Nazi era, was carried out under the command of General Ratko Mladić during the Bosnian war.

The town of Srebrenica in north-eastern Bosnia had been declared a UN "safe zone". However, Serb forces managed to overrun the town, despite the efforts of UN forces, represented by Dutchbat, a 400-strong contingent of Dutch peacekeepers.

By 11 July, up to 25,000 Muslim Bosnian refugees were seeking refuge in a UN compound in Potočari, near Srebrenica. Serb forces allowed the women to travel on buses to Muslim-held territory, but held on to all of the men of military age as well as many boys.

On the nights of 12 and 13 July 1995, they were loaded onto buses or trucks and taken to isolated killing fields for execution. Their bodies were piled into mass graves, making identification of the victims a difficult and lengthy process.

29 March 1993: Muslim Bosnian refugees being evacuated from Srebrenica fight for a piece of bread on a UN truck on their way to TuzlaAFP31 May 1993: A heavily armed Bosnian Serb soldier leads his comrades through a field during a combing operation near the Muslim-controlled town of SrebrenicaReuters5 August 1993: Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb military commander, whispers to Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb warlord and leader of the Serb-run part of Bosnia during the 1992-1995 warAFP28 February 1994: Dutch soldiers accompany a UN convoy of armoured vehicles on their way to Lukavac and SrebrenicaAFP11 July 1995: An elderly Muslim woman and her husband receive treatment for injuries inflicted on them by Serb military forces as they fled the Bosnian enclave of SrebrenicaAFP12 July 1995: Bosnian Muslim children, refugees from Srebrenica, peer from a truck as they wait to be transported from the Bosnian village of Potocari to Muslim-held KladanjReuters13 July 1995: A Bosnian Serb soldier fires a heavy machine gun as his comrade holds the cartridge belt during a mopping-up operation near SrebrenicaReuters13 July 1995: Bosnian Muslims flee Srebrenica after Bosnian Serbs overran the former "safe area"Reuters24 July 1996: Forensic experts from the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague work on a pile of partly-decomposed bodies found in a mass grave in the village of PilicaAFP28 March 1997: Stacks of unidentified corpses line an underground shelter at a Bosnian morgue in Tuzla. The body bags contain victims found after the 1995 Srebrenica massacreReuters10 July 2001: A forensic expert checks the remains of over 3,500 Bosnian Muslims, most from the onetime UN safe zone of Srebrenica, at the Institute for Missing Persons in TuzlaReuters31 March 2003: Relatives of some of the 8,000 Muslim men and boys slaughtered in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre search rows of coffins next to freshly-dug graves for loved onesReuters10 July 2005: More than 600 coffins containing the remains of newly-identified victims of the Srebrenica massacre await a mass funeral in a factory hall in PotocariReuters22 July 2008: Bosnian Serb wartime leader and war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic was arrested in a suburb of Belgrade where he lived, posing in disguise as a alternative medicine guruReuters22 July 2008: A Bosnian Muslim woman prays at the memorial wall, inscribed with the names of the victims, at the Potocari Memorial Centre near SrebrenicaAFP26 May 2011: Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic was arrested in Serbia after years on the run over genocide chargesReuters10 July 2012: Lightning is seen during a storm at the Memorial Centre in Potocari near Srebrenica, the night before a mass burialReuters10 July 2014: A Bosnian Muslim woman cries near the coffin of a relative, one of 175 coffins of newly-identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre due to be buried on the anniversaryReuters